Chapter 17. Obsession

"O god of light, may your blood bring me the promised abundance,

By this oath, my brotherhood is yours

O god of treachery, may your blood give me the violence due,

By this crime, my passion is yours

O god of sacrifice may your blood grant me the appeasement of sworn evils,

By this self-denial, my being abandons itself".

Song of Ludvaetyr, Lo, scribe of the royal union of Palos.

***

Blood, she needed blood! This hunger had been nagging at her like an old friend for so long, that the cursed sun was still illuminating the room that was supposed to have the curtains drawn. The black figure was particularly hungry. She always missed him more, especially at times like these when she could only wait for her holy grail. So much so that she forgot to ask herself the right questions: who had entered this forbidden place? With a jerk, the emerald drapes fell away, plunging the discreet little room into its customary half-light. His thirst was quenched by the thought of that coward's experiments, so the lanky figure made him ask. That fool! Blood, he needed blood, liters and liters and maybe even two or three souls. A cruel smile appeared on her full lips. How impatient she was!

***

Seated at a table, with his back arched, a stiffly muscled shadow was observing round vials filled with an unknown substance. With slender, gnarled fingers, the man-like figure manipulated dried plants on one side and sharp shears armed with long silver blades on the other. The worktop was old, almost battered except for the twisted corners of varnished wood that revealed otherwise. Next to the mysterious samples, a small wooden promontory was overlooked by a tiny cauldron boiling leaves and a substance as black as cinchona. The room was dark except for the office area, where a large table lamp with a chiselled base shone brightly. The man paused for a moment, mumbled something and then complained that his work had burned. The blue material contained in the flasks began to oscillate as if alive, causing the glass surrounding it to move. The plainly-dressed man, except for the circle of gold encircling his forehead, reacted instantly. The sharp slap of his hand on the chair halted the trembling of those samples. He jabbered intelligible words of annoyance, rose abruptly from his seat and hurried towards the shelves, where he rummaged around. Then he picked up a small, black-covered booklet. He flipped through it quickly and placed his finger on a word that had almost been erased by the gnarled limb's touch.

- What have I forgotten, what have I forgotten... he kept repeating.

Feverishly, he abandoned the book, grabbed a second and then a third, but still nothing. Suddenly, his eyebrow twitched. Frowning, he thought quickly, then stopped handling the red-covered volume. He tossed it to the floor before moving a stepladder in the process. Then he grabbed the dictionary at the top of the shelf. In his haste, he almost fell off his booster seat, but quickly caught himself on the bar and dropped the book, which fell to the floor in a mess. Exasperated, and with an agility quite unlike his rickety frame, he quickly climbed down from his perch. Picking up the thick book, he placed it on the table where his plants and vials awaited him. Along with the boiled mixture, which he let cool as he turned off the gas underneath.

Pleased with his cleverness, the man chanted some nonsense words before turning the leaves to the word blood. There, he bookmarked the word "soul", where he did exactly the same thing. He returned to the first page, took out his notepad and began to write:

- Blood is part of all human and animal life, indispensable for survival.

- Blood has healing and rejuvenating properties, and confers immortality (the latter remains to be seen). The blood of the impure beings that inhabit our world is part of this.

- I already knew that," he agrees to himself.

- Blood is linked to a deity: Ludvaetyr (research this so-called god).

- Blood makes no distinction with the soul

- Blood contains supernatural power, and sacrifices are required to possess it, 

- Strange... thought the man. Where did... He chuckled, then suddenly exclaimed:

- Haha! That... I know. Souls, little souls," he crooned brokenly, "here!" he exclaimed aloud, after turning and flipping pages of the encyclopedia. Before continuing to scribble. 

- Like blood, the soul is separable from the body (nothing to declare)

- Soul and blood are inseparable.

- If we mix the two, he thought, I'll have to try it haha!

In the research he'd been doing for some time now, the names Palos, Ludvaetyr and immortality had come up a lot. In a book where the cover was falling apart, one paragraph caught his eye more than the others: "There is a, the word was erased, rumored to be a cure-all for nardag. Anyone who enjoyed it would be able to return to life without harm. Ancient stories tell that these people would be the descendants of a God, it would remain..." the section stopped dead at this point as if someone had wanted to delete it.

The man grumbled, his research just beginning to get interesting. Too bad for now, he thought, wound up. Caught off-guard, he was cut off mid-thought by a call from the communication device beside him. With an impatient wave of his hand, he stood up and listened attentively, his wrinkled face marking the astonishment that followed. Mouth open, the insult was on the tip of his tongue, before he slammed the door and left the room, smiling in fascination.